Prince Otto

“Seraphina,” he said, “let it be so, indeed; let all that was be merely the abuse of dreaming; let me begin again, a stranger. I have dreamed, in a long dream, that I adored a girl unkind and beautiful; in all things my superior, but still cold, like ice. And again I dreamed, and thought she changed and melted, glowed and turned to me. And I – who had no merit but a love, slavish and unerect – lay close, and durst not move for fear of waking.”